Proprietary Fingerprint Template Evaluations (PFT) Overview

Share

Summary

These evaluations are intended to assess the core algorithmic capability of the technology to perform one-to-one verification.

These evaluations assesses accuracy of end-stage matchers i.e. (the computationally expensive algorithms used in the very last stages of one-to-many Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) searches). This evaluation is not necessarily representative of a provider's capability to field large-scale identification technologies, because AFIS engineering requires tradeoffs between efficiency, cost, accuracy and other resources, and exploits multi-stage matching techniques to expedite search.

Description

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Proprietary Fingerprint Template evaluation is an ongoing program to measure the performance of fingerprint matching software by utilizing vendor proprietary fingerprint templates. There have been two phases to the PFT evaluation.

The original PFT evaluation (which is no longer accepting SDKs for evaluation) that only reported the matching algorithm's accuracy. The newer PFTII evaluation (which is accepting SDKs for evaluation) also reports matcher accuracy information.

PFTII will report template extraction times, template size information and matcher timings. PFTII will use both two finger and ten finger datasets to report results on slap-to-slap, slap-to-roll, and roll-to-roll matching. PFTII continues to be only a 1-to-1 verification evaluation it does not report 1-to-many matching results.

High Accuracy from the evaluations does not automatically imply a provider has a capability to field a full-scale AFIS installation.

NOTE: The algorithms submitted for this evaluation are stand alone and not evaluated as part of an AFIS system. In no case does identification of any commercial product, trade name, or vendor, imply recommendation or endorsement by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, nor does it imply that the products and equipment identified in the evaluation are necessarily the best available for the purpose.